Friday, February 21, 2014

My young friend who works as an ESL instructor narrows his
eyes as he says all his Asian students call themselves by English nicknames.

“Like, Bruce, or Steve.” His hampered delivery, together
with the constriction of his facial muscles, communicates a sentiment somewhere
around scorn and regret.

“Well, I’m Kate,” I tell him. What I wanted to say is that there
is nothing wrong about an immigrant to have an American name. Instead, I find
myself explaining: “People can’t pronounce my legal name. Nobody could, so I
let them call me by my initial ‘K.’ Some of them thought it was ‘Kay,’ and I
didn’t mind. Other people thought it was ‘Kate,’ so I eventually became a
‘Kate.’”

“How do you pronounce your Korean name?” He wants to know.

I say it quickly, slightly embarrassed for a reason that I
cannot identify at that moment.

He repeats it and I cringe.

“You don’t seem to be comfortable with that,” he says.

In fact I am not.

“In Korea, people my age are rarely called by their first
names,” I tell him. Instead of going into how I really feel—that it hurts my feelings
to think that I was not accepted as Kate—I tell him that in Korea an adult
person is more likely to be called by her title than by her first name. I don’t
tell him that in Korea one doesn’t call a person ten years his senior by her
first name like he just did. He would be calling her “noo-nim,” which means big
sister. But I don’t want him to call me that. We don’t relate to each other
that way. This is an American relationship. I’m Kate and Kate is the only
appropriate name for me between he and I.

For the following few weeks, the leftover impression of this
interaction bothers me like sand in my shoe. The thing is, I felt rejected
as an American being and as if I was asked to keep my place as a foreigner in the
country that I’ve considered home for so many years. Americans, even the best
of them—particularly the best of them—like to see immigrants as those ethnic
beings that bring exotic flavors from faraway places to their home. They want
us to preserve our distinctiveness.

Some immigrants, in fact most of them I suppose, welcome
this. All of us, I’m sure, are grateful for the generosity with which non-immigrant
Americans accept us. But I sometimes wonder if this form of acceptance also constitutes
a version of exclusion. By encouraging preservation of ethnic identity and celebrating
cultural differences, are the compassionate natives in effect saying, “You are
not one of us,” and pushing us away into a conceptual ghetto?

The truth is that I often feel exactly like the character in the short story by Nell
Freudenberger in which a SAT tutor from India is asked by his student how he could
understand her American self.

Because I am not any
different, he wanted to tell her. He wanted grab her shoulders: If we are what we want, I am the same as
you.

Most immigrants are proud of their heritage, and are eager to
preserve and represent the culture and civilization of their origin. Many of
them learn to demand that the majority American respect their ethnic identity. Take
an example of a Facebook post by a friend’s friend that I read a few weeks ago.
This middle-eastern immigrant (or descendent, I don’t know which) had used an
American nickname for years, but now she was requesting people to call her by
her full name. In this beautiful post, she said that using the American name,
which she did for the convenience of others, never felt right for her deep
inside. She wrote she wanted to send a message to her children that it was not all
right to compromise one’s identity just because it is unusual. I appreciate her
position and support her decision. I think it is fantastic. In my humble
opinion, it is a very American thing to do to assert one’s identity this way.

So, let me assert my own blend of identity that is rather
peculiar and particular: I am Kate. Ethnicity is not a big part of my sense of who
I am. But if you insist, I guess I see myself as an immigrant American more
than anything else. I don’t feel I’m merely a product of the environment in
which I grew up. I am a work in progress, constantly growing and restructuring myself
as I go through life experiences where I live, both physically and mentally. I don’t
mind my full legal name being used as long as it is in an appropriate context and
with an appropriate title. But I feel Kate is my “real” name in an American setting.
It is not fake just because it is not legally recognized. I use this name in
combination with my legal last name in professional settings; I use it with another
last name in creative situations. But mostly, I am just me, this conscious
experience of having this thought right at this moment.